VashonBePrepared Disaster Preparedness Blogs

Everyone's blog is listed on this page chronologically. Use options on the right to search or filter by various means - or to look further back in time. Subscribe for automatic delivery of these updates using RSS or Twitter using the tag VashonBPrepared- no 'e' to keep within the 15 character limit. These used to automatically show up on our Facebook page - but they no longer allow that. Any VashonBePrepared volunteers can easily blog - contact the Tech Team to get set up.

All Recent Blogs

March 31 - Free Seminar Severe weather or an earthquake WILL create these Vashon conditions: The power out for days or longer Homes damaged, roads closed Phones not working well or at all Our Fire Department overloaded with emergency responses Ferries stop serving Vashon – docks may be damaged or boats needed elsewhere Gas, supplies and groceries not arriving from the mainland Families separated – some folks stranded off-island;...

Vashon Island CERT:
Sponsored by Vashon Island Fire & Rescue….CERT is both a basic course and an active local team of citizens prepared to support the Fire Dept. or Sheriff
A partner with VashonBePrepared, the local network of citizen groups and government agencies dedicated to leading our island in preparedness and response

You’re invited to a South Seattle Home Fair on February 10, 2018, hosted by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. Here’s your chance to ask an expert about your planned remodel and our permitting process and code requirements. You can also get information about rental housing rules, homeowner assistance, landslide awareness, and much, much more.

Who: Whether you’re a homeowner, landlord, renter, or potential homeowner, this event has something for you.

When: Saturday, February 10, 2018 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Where: Filipino Community Center 5740 Martin Luther King Jr Way S (The Filipino Community Center is ADA accessible.)

Severe weather or an earthquake WILL create these Vashon conditions:
The power out for days or longer
Homes damaged, some roads closed
Phones not working well or at all
Vashon Island Fire & Rescue overwhelmed
Ferries stop serving Vashon – docks may be damaged or the boats needed elsewhere
Gas, supplies and groceries not arriving from the mainland
Families separated – some folks stranded off-island; many folks can’t get to work
Learn the ropes to be resilient – not to mention well-fed!
Four hours packed with resources, advice & island...

SEATTLE – A year following one of the nation’s largest domestic drills, lessons-learned continue to guide strategies that improve the Pacific Northwest’s ability to survive and recover from a catastrophic Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami.

On June 7, 2016, more than 20,000 emergency managers in Idaho, Oregon and Washington kicked off Cascadia Rising 2016, a four-day, large scale exercise to test response and recovery capabilities in the wake of a 9.0 magnitude CSZ earthquake and tsunami. The exercise involved local, state, tribal and federal partners,...

Eliminates or reduces State and local grant funding by $667 million for programs administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that are either unauthorized by the Congress, such as FEMA’s Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, or that must provide more measurable results and ensure the Federal Government is not supplanting other stakeholders’ responsibilities, such as the Homeland Security Grant Program. For that reason, the Budget also proposes establishing a 25 percent non-Federal cost match for FEMA preparedness grant awards that currently require no cost match. This is the same cost-sharing approach as FEMA’s disaster recovery grants. The activities and acquisitions funded through these grant programs are primarily State and local functions. •

The National Weather Service’s primary web site www.weather.gov plans to implement an upgrade. The improvement will involve the point ‘n click site specific forecasts and zone forecasts.

Once these changes occur on March 7, all your current forecast.weather.gov bookmarks will change. Links to a specific forecast page will display an error message that includes a URL to the new web site location. That is your opportunity to update your bookmarks to provide access to NWS forecasts quickly after the upgrade.

The primary focus of the upgrade is to make the forecast pages more reliable during weather events, but there are some benefits of new forecast pages as well that include:

· Addition of 7-day hourly forecast information to the point forecast page

· A new mobile-friendly landing and graphical/tabular forecast page

· Low-bandwidth optimization for all pages, on a partial roll-out at launch

Emergency Preparedness & Response:
A Half Day Basic Class on February 4 ... OR ...A 45-hour Course Packed With Skills
Participation in CERT is highly rewarding for both you and your neighbors. If community support when problems arise is important to you, CERT will likely be an extraordinarily positive experience. CERT originated in Los Angeles in 1994 to support the city fire department, and has been enhanced and extended to hundreds of communities by FEMA to help citizens safely help each other in various emergencies.
The rewards are:
Increased safety at your home & businessIncreased personal preparedness for windstorms, earthquakes and power outages New life-saving and first aid skillsIncreased self-confidence New friendsParticipation in the Vashon communityStylish green hard-hat and hi-vis vest (for team)
Requirements to be on the active team:
Vashon resident - full-time or part-time Very basic physical fitnessBasic CERT course (3 parts; see back of this flyer) Several additional Vashon-specific...

A number of devastating earthquakes and powerful storms made 2016 the costliest twelve months for natural catastrophe losses in the last four years. Losses totaled US$ 175bn, a good two-thirds more than in the previous year, and very nearly as high as the figure for 2012 (US$ 180bn). The share of uninsured losses – the so-called protection or insurance gap – remained substantial at around 70%....

A few good (but currently inactive) CERTies needed for January 20 and 27 Refresher

The Refresher is an 8-hour review of medical and SAR (Search and Rescue), plus lots of updates for people who took the basic course awhile ago and would like to join the active team. The course is held in two 4-hour sessions on Friday evenings.

If you’re currently active with CERT and would like to help with medical or an...

OLYMPIA – Gov. Jay Inslee today issued a directive to state agencies to bolster Washington state efforts to prepare for a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

The directive establishes a new Resilient Washington subcabinet charged with providing a coordinated approach to preparing for and responding to a major earthquake or tsunami. The subcabinet’s efforts will address everything from educating the public about personal preparedness to planning for major disruptions to utility and fuel services and destruction of major roads, bridges and airports. The subcabinet will also develop recommendations and plans for ensuring availability of medical and human service operations.

“We know the question isn’t ‘if’ a large-scale earthquake will happen in our state, but how well we will be prepared,” Inslee said. “While there’s no way to fully anticipate all the impacts a large-scale earthquake will have on our infrastructure,...

Executive Summary Overarching Conclusions A large magnitude Cascadia Subduction Zone fault earthquake and tsunami is perhaps one of the most complex disaster scenarios we face as emergency management and public safety officials in the Pacific Northwest. Due to this complexity, life-saving and life-sustaining response operations will hinge on the effective coordination...

VashonBePrepared held its annual meeting yesterday at the Vashon Emergency Operations Center.

A simple affair this year, many of our partner organizations reviewed the last year’s activities and plans for the year and the coming year. See our list of accomplishments which soon should reflect some of these activities.

A key item ahead is to hopefully upgrade the VIFR Training Center, and merge our EOC into this larger location.

VashonBePrepared’s board then voted in a new set of bylaws, which cleaned up some antiquated language, but primarily enlarged the number of our partner organizations – many of whom have been participating informally for years:

Most homes on Vashon are well built against the seasonal rains and water we face. Still, if a drain clogs, or the incoming rain is heavier than the system can take you may still wind up with a flooded basement or other area of your home.

FEMA has a number of guidelines borne of experience for how homeowners can handle floods. Although focused on floods from Hurricane Mathew out east, many of the same guidelines apply to floods that may occur on Vashon.

Seattle Colleges has generously offered to host an Incident Command System 100/200/700 Combination Course at no charge.

The course will be held Thu, October 13, 2016 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM at South Seattle College, 6000 16th Ave SW, Seattle, WA.

If you are interested in participating in any of the VashonBePrepared groups, this is an excellent way to get up to speed on the terminology and concepts used on Vashon – and throughout the United States.

Vashon Island Fire & Rescue Welcomes National Guard
A Note from Fire Chief Hank Lipe
Nobody could ever truly be ready for an earthquake as bad as the Cascadia scenario. It will overwhelm even the best efforts of our small fire district and the many organizations and volunteers in the VashonBePrepared coalition.

But Islanders are resilient and I know we will all work together as neighbors to take care of each other as best we can until mainland help arrives. Still, a community’s response to a large scale disaster is only as good as its planning and training. That’s...

King County is investing in a new regional public emergency alert and notification system which features a public alert service - ALERT King County - to keep residents informed about significant events or emergency situations.

ALERT King County replaces RPIN (Regional Public Information & Notification) and uses the capable CodeRED software to drive the system.

The new software offers enhanced features that allow officials to more precisely target...

Stay informed when you are roaming the urban lands: Consider subscribing to AlertSeattle – the City’s new, real-time emergency alert and notification system.

When emergencies happen, be the first to know. AlertSeattle is your link to real-time, official notifications from the City of Seattle.

AlertSeattle is a free service that allows you to sign up online to receive customized alerts via text message, email, voice message, and on social media (Facebook and Twitter). This service is provided by the City of Seattle at no cost; however, message and data rates may apply.

In addition to emergency alerts, you can also choose to receive customizable community notifications. These will include notifications about severe weather,...

1) People of mountain villages and island communities may be similarly vulnerable in the event of severe disruption of critical systems and services.
2) Governments and NGOs will be hard-pressed to help, especially in outlying areas.
3) Household and community resilience may make the most difference during rescue, recovery, and rebuilding.

Last Thursday, FEMA and its partners released the 2015 National Preparedness Report (NPR). The NPR is an annual status report summarizing the Nation's progress toward reaching the 2011 National Preparedness Goal of a secure and resilient nation. This report marks the fourth iteration of the NPR. The 2015 NPR places particular emphasis on highlighting preparedness progress in implementing the National Planning Frameworks. The Frameworks describe how the whole...

Two joint studies are out this week and indicate that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013’s predictions of a global sea rise of a bit over 3 feet by the end of the century could be way off.

Apparently warm ocean water is already undermining a vast stretch of West Antarctica ice that could release enough water to raise sea levels by up to 11 feet in the next 100-200 years. 13 million people live within 10 vertical feet of the ocean and Miami, New Orleans, and New York City would be the cities most affected.

Personal weather stations (PWS) supplement public weather stations, such as those at airports. Given the right equipment, citizens with a PWS can share their weather data with a number of services who will aggregate the data and help collectively provide better weather forecasts for the region.

According to the LA Times, the entire west coast should get access to the first generation of early earthquake warnings as early as next year. Dependent on congress’ upcoming vote, the budget would be some $16 million annually.

The new system would be the first generation, after a bare-bones prototype system has proven the concept over the last year or so in a limited set of locations. California would go from 200 to 400 sensors while 275 sensors are apparently all that are currently planned for Oregon and Washington.

Specialized systems have been in place for years. For instance the Alaskan Way Viaduct automatically is closed...

Seattle to host Nov. 18th Twitter event to take questions about landslides

Did you know that most landslides occur between the months of October and April? And that 86 percent of landslides are caused to some extent by human activity? Landslide season is upon us and the City of Seattle is urging residents to take preventive measures to protect themselves and their property from possible landslides.

Heavy rains are likely this year for the Pacific Northwest. As the rainfall continues to increase throughout...

Want Older Posts - or a Different Topic?

The above section lists a subset of all our blogs. Initially it is just the most recent ~20-25 blogs, but if you use widgets in the right column to specify a particular author, topic, starting date or other filtering criteria, the above display (and that on the home page) may reflect your choices.

If you just want older blogs, specify a different starting date. If you want really old (circa 2005-2010) stories, see our archives from our previous site.

Subscribe for automatic delivery of these updates using RSS or Twitter using the tag VashonBPrepared- no 'e' to keep within the 15 character limit. These should automatically show up on our Facebook page too - but that's currently only works intermittently.

Other established VashonBePrepared volunteers can easily blog - contact der Tech Team to get set up.